Let's be clear. There is zero chance of Trump being removed from office by impeachment. Terminology: To be impeached means that the House has passed articles of impeachment, which can occur on a majority vote. To be removed from office through impeachment means being "convicted" in the Senate of high crimes and misdemeanors, which requires a 2/3 supermajority. That is an absolute, mathematical impossibility, unless some bizarre series of events leads to the deaths and replacements of enough Republican senators that the Democrats wind up with a 2/3 supermajority within the chamber. And that ain't happenin'. There are no Justin Amashes in the Senate GOP, and there never will be.
With that clarification, can Pelosi stop the House from passing articles of impeachment? She clearly wants to. Momentum is building, though. What does "momentum" mean? It means that the pro-impeachment contingent is riling itself up and talking itself into the belief that it must impeach, and it isn't getting shut down the way it used to. The tenor of political dialog is a hard thing to quantify, which means I have a difficult time describing it, but Members of Congress are talking about impeachment differently, as are journalists. That matters, potentially.
Normally, the speaker can stop just about any legislation she doesn't want. We call this "negative agenda control." Speakers decide what makes it on the calendar in ways both subtle and crude. In the most subtle of ways, speakers essentially select committee chairs, and committee chairs decide whether or not to take up action on any legislation.
That brings us to the House Judiciary Committee. Jerry Nadler. For all practical purposes, Nadler is there because Pelosi put him there, which means a couple of things. On general matters of politics and policy, they tend to see eye to eye, or she wouldn't let him chair that committee. It's kind of an important one. So, when Bill X gets to Jerry Nadler's committee, she can generally trust that Nadler will do what she would prefer because they are simpatico. However, that's a tendency, and if they happen to disagree... too late.
There's also a question of loyalty. Nadler owes Pelosi. Does that count for something? It would count for a hell of a lot more if it weren't for those morons who forced Pelosi to take a term limit pledge to regain the Speaker's gavel! That weakened her! Even if Dems don't lose the House in a year, or three, she'll be gone. That adds additional uncertainty to the existing uncertainty of whether or not Dems will keep term limits for committee chairs, which never became an issue when they ran things from 2007-11, and all of that means Nadler isn't quite so much of a Pelosi constituent as a committee chair might normally be.
Um... so what? The so what is that Nadler has been making noises that put him a little more on the pro-impeachment side. He has said things like, "all options are on the table," and, "there is certainly justification." That said, Nadler wants public opinion on his side before impeaching because he understands the dilemma, but he isn't being as cautious as Pelosi. And he isn't fully beholden to Pelosi.
This is the basic problem for Pelosi. She loses Nadler, and she loses control. On conventional bills, there are plenty of tricks with the agenda such that if the rabble in her caucus want to push for a self-destructive vote, she can save them from themselves. If one of the village idiots, like Ocasio-Cortez wants to introduce some bill that makes the Democrats look like a caricature of themselves, and Pelosi wants to block a vote on it, no problem. Articles of impeachment, though, are different if they get reported out of the Judiciary Committee. Refusing to schedule floor action on them? Not exactly a real option. Poison pill amendments or other fun games via the Rules Committee? Not with articles of impeachment. She loses Nadler, and the bag of tricks that comes with the speaker's gavel loses its gris-gris.
And what she really does not want to do is find herself in the position of having the House take up articles of impeachment, pressuring Dems to vote no to avoid a 2020 backlash. That's kind of a non-starter.
So, what's Nadler's position, again? Basically, his position is that without public support for impeachment, bad idea, but if you listen to him, he sounds very much like he is moving in that direction. What should worry the Pelosi-ites is that he isn't shutting down impeachment talk the way Pelosi has tried, and that's a dangerous situation for those who see a 2020 backlash.
This demonstrates something interesting about the power of the speaker. In terms of manipulation of the legislative process, it is normally quite a powerful position, and Pelosi is about the best there is. Articles of impeachment, though, limit that power because they don't give the speaker her normal tools. She can't work the amendment process through the Rules Committee, and the politics of the situation prevent her from simply shunting it off the calendar. She is highly dependent-- more so than usual-- on her selection of committee chairs, meaning Nadler. Nadler sounds like he is starting to soften on impeachment, and that also may demonstrate some of the effects of the Democratic Party stupidly forcing Pelosi to take a personal term limit pledge for the Speakership. Nadler would be more firmly under Pelosi's control if it hadn't been for that pledge, forced on her by some true morons, and if Nadler goes over to the impeachment side, Pelosi may not be able to stop it.
The Tea Partification of the Democratic Party continues. At the end of this, I hope that Pelosi and Boehner can sit on a beach together, like Adama and Roslin, and commiserate over what it is like to try to lead a House filled with rabble.
